New NTFS Linux Driver Spun A Ninth Time, Still Under Review

Back in August was the surprise that Paragon Software is looking to mainline their NTFS read-write driver in the mainline Linux kernel after years of offering it as a commercial driver for those needing reliable support for this Microsoft file-system on Linux. Two months later they are now up to their ninth revision of this driver in their pursuit of mainline inclusion.

Paragon was quick to update their "NTFS3" driver patches following some initial criticism by upstream developers. They have continued refining the code with adding additional features, fixing various code issues, better code formating, handling behavior like remounting a file-system, and fixing compressed file operations.

On Friday they sent out the ninth version of their driver, which adds additional code cosmetic improvements. The latest spin can be found on the kernel mailing list.

They are making progress on tidying this driver up and getting it ready for inclusion, which should be in better shape than the current kernel driver primarily focused on just read support.

It doesn't look like this new driver will land for Linux 5.10 but presumably next year. We are half way through the Linux 5.10 merge window already and with this NTFS3 driver aiming to replace the existing driver, it further complicates the initial mainlining of it whether to permit both drivers into the kernel tree for some time and with build system magic only allow one to be compiled at a time or if the upstream maintainers will prefer to wait in merging this new driver until it's immediately ready to replace the existing NTFS support code. In any case, at least this Paragon contribution appears to be maturing nicely for having better NTFS Linux support in 2021.